For twenty-three years he stays there, away from his family (remembering, perhaps, in self-exculpating way, how Shakespeare had once done much the same), rambling over his old haunts, writing new verse, revamping old books, petting his Pomeranian dog, entertaining admiring guests, fuming and raving when crossed. He was more dangerously loud, too, than of old; and at last is driven away, to escape punishment for some scathing libels into which a storm of what he counted righteous rage has betrayed him. It must have been a pitiful thing to see this old, white-haired man--past eighty now--homeless, as good as childless, skulking, as it were, in London, just before sailing for the Continent,--appearing suddenly at Forster’s house, seated upon his bed there, with Dickens in presence, mumbling about Latin poetry and its flavors! He finds his way to Genoa, then to Florence, then to the Fiesole Villa once more; but it would seem as if there were no glad greetings on either side; and in a few days estrangement comes again, and he returns to Florence. Twice or thrice more those visits to Fiesole are repeated, in the vague hope, it would seem, floating in the old man’s mind, that by some miracle of heaven, aspects would change there--or perhaps in him--and black grow white, and gloom sail away under some new blessed gale from Araby. But it does never come; nor ever the muddied waters of that home upon the Florentine hills flow pure and bright again. _Final Exile and Death._ He goes back--eighty-five now--toothless, and trembling under weight of years and wranglings, to the Via Nunziatina, in Florence; he has no means now--having despoiled himself for the benefit of those living at his Villa of Fiesole, who will not live with him, or he with them; he is largely dependent upon a brother in England. He passes a summer, in these times, with the American sculptor Story. He receives occasional wandering friends; has a new pet of a dog to fondle.